World Wide Web

At the end of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN in Geneva. The British computer scientist faced the same problem daily: how to find information in what had become a Tower of Babel at the European nuclear research organization? Researchers were accumulating documents about their experiments, equipment, and discoveries, but everything remained scattered and inaccessible. Berners-Lee then conceived a system to connect this dispersed information.

For decades, visionaries had dreamed of machines to organize human knowledge. Paul Otlet had sketched his Mundaneum as early as 1934, a connected universal library. Vannevar Bush theorized the Memex in 1945 in "As We May Think", a machine capable of navigating between documents linked by associations of ideas. Ted Nelson coined the term "hypertext" for this non-linear navigation in 1965 with his Xanadu project, which never came to fruition despite decades of development. Apple brought part of these dreams to life in 1987 with HyperCard, the first commercial success of hypertext.

Berners-Lee took decisive action. Rather than designing a complex system, he focused on simplicity. In 1990, with Robert Cailliau's help, he laid the foundations of his architecture: the URL uniquely identifies each resource, the HTTP protocol organizes exchanges between machines, the HTML language structures documents and their links. Shortly after, he developed the first Web browser, which he called WorldWideWeb, before renaming it Nexus.

The first website went live on August 6, 1991 at the address info.cern.ch. Tim Berners-Lee explained what the World Wide Web was, how to create pages, and how to install a browser. The information spread through Usenet forums. The following year, Les Cernettes, a music group formed by CERN employees, saw their photo become the first non-scientific image published on the Web. A nod to the democratization to come.

The turning point came on April 30, 1993. On that day, CERN relinquished its copyright on Web technologies and placed them in the public domain. This decision, seemingly trivial in retrospect, changed everything. Anyone could now use, modify, and distribute the code without constraints. Universities seized the technology, and businesses would follow.

Marc Andreessen seized the opportunity. In 1994, his Mosaic browser revolutionized the user experience with its intuitive graphical interface. Gone were command lines and austere interfaces: the Web became accessible to the general public. That year also saw the birth of the World Wide Web Consortium under Berners-Lee's direction. This organization established the technical standards of the Web.

1995 marked the explosive entry of commerce onto the Web. Yahoo! launched its directory, meticulously classifying sites by categories. Jeff Bezos opened his Amazon bookstore from his Seattle garage. Microsoft integrated Internet Explorer into Windows 95, triggering the first browser war against Netscape. The Web was no longer just a research tool; it had become a marketplace.

Three years later, two Stanford students disrupted the game. Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google with their PageRank algorithm, which ranked pages according to their popularity measured by incoming links. This mathematical approach to relevance radically transformed information retrieval. The Web became the universal gateway to digital knowledge.

Evolution continued in successive waves. The early Web, from 1989 to 2005, resembled an immense library. Sites remained static; users were content to read. HTML, HTTP, and basic protocols were sufficient to operate this still-simple universe.

Between 2004 and 2016, everything shifted toward interaction with what would later be called Web 2.0. Users no longer simply consulted; they created, shared, and commented. Facebook opened its doors in 2004, YouTube followed in 2005. JavaScript, XML, and Ajax enriched interfaces, making them dynamic and responsive.

From 2015 onward, a third generation emerged: the Semantic Web. The ambition changed scale: the goal was to make information understandable by machines themselves. RDF, RDFS, and OWL structured data so that computers could grasp the meaning, not just display it.

The HTTP protocol accompanied these transformations. Its version 1.1, standardized in 1997, introduced persistent connections that avoided renegotiating each exchange. HTTP/2 arrived in 2015 with stream multiplexing, which allowed multiple simultaneous requests on a single connection. HTTP/3, finalized in 2022, abandoned TCP in favor of QUIC based on UDP, gaining speed.

The appearance of Apple's AppStore in 2008 redefined Web access. Mobile applications complemented the traditional browser, sometimes replacing it. The Web moved out of computers and into our pockets, cars, and watches. This ubiquity was unthinkable in 1989.

The architecture conceived by Berners-Lee has withstood all these transformations. The separation between content and presentation, unique identifiers for each resource, the standardization of protocols: these technical choices enabled continuous expansion without major disruption. The client-server model and REST architecture provided a framework flexible enough to accommodate all uses.

Of course, today's Web bears little resemblance to the documentary system envisioned at CERN. It has transformed how we communicate, inform ourselves, conduct commerce, and work. While certain developments are concerning (concentration of services among a few players, exploitation of personal data, disinformation), Berners-Lee's vision of a universal and decentralized information space has largely been realized.